Mojang kicks off the post-Wilderness Bound cycle with performance upgrades, easier mushroom placement, and sulfur cave generation for worlds dating back before Caves and Cliffs.
If you fired up the launcher today you probably noticed 26.4 Snapshot 1 is available. After the Wilderness Bound drop shipped earlier this month Mojang wasted no time moving to the next cycle and the changes are more substantial than the usual bug-fix drip.
Vulkan Is Now The Sensible Default
The big headline is the graphics API setting. “Default” now equals “Prefer Vulkan” and the game will stop flipping the switch itself after a startup crash. For players on decent hardware this should mean smoother frame times and less stuttering without having to dig into video settings. Mojang has been slowly pushing Vulkan for a while. Making it the baseline feels like an admission that OpenGL has run its course for a game this old.
Mushrooms No Longer Need Perfect Lighting
Red and brown mushrooms can now be placed on any block with a solid top face. The old light-level restriction for spreading still applies but the placement change opens up more reliable mushroom farms and decorative builds in places that used to fight you. Small tweak. Noticeable for anyone who actually uses the stuff.
On the technical side the data pack version bumped to 122 and resource packs to 98. There is a new mod_list custom packet so servers can see what clients are running without extra plugins. Shader defines got cleaned up for the order-independent transparency work that started in earlier snapshots. A batch of long-standing bugs around water jumping and entity behavior also got fixed.
- Sulfur caves now generate in upgraded pre-Caves & Cliffs chunks
- Mushroom placement rules significantly relaxed
- Vulkan set as the new "Default" graphics backend
- New network packet for client mod debugging
- 29 bugs fixed including ancient water collision quirks
Community reaction has been cautiously positive. The Vulkan shift is overdue for many and the old-world cave injection is the kind of backwards-compatibility win Mojang rarely delivers. Whether 26.4 turns into a full mushroom and cave-focused drop or just more technical housekeeping remains to be seen but the opening snapshot sets a clearer tone than usual.
Welcome to the first snapshot of 26.4! We’re kicking things off with a range of technical updates and improvements, including Vulkan becoming the default graphics API.
Snapshots move fast. If you are testing make backups. The fact that they dropped this the day after the Live trailer dropped suggests the team is already deep into whatever comes after Wilderness Bound. Expect more frequent updates in the coming weeks.
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